I have lived in Alaska — in a small native village north of the Arctic circle. It is a beautiful place where hunting is part of both the native culture and those who have come to live in Alaska. I would dare say that with rare exceptions, everyone in Alaska hunts and fishes, usually to put food on their table.

I know people are shocked that Palin, a woman, is a hunter. Personally I oppose hunting and I don’t believe that we have the right to kill animals and fish for our own personal, selfish reasons.

If you are against what Sarah Palin has done as a hunter, my suggestions is that you make your values consistent by not eating meat or fish. You can join PETA at http://www. peta. org

Some people feel that if they don’t eat meat, then it’s OK to eat chicken. News flash! Chicken is meat! You are still killing an animal — or having someone do it for you. So, in the interest if letting all my Democratic friends learn a little more about these wonderful creatures, he’s some info you should know about chickens.

Then after you have stopped eating meat and fish you can criticize Palin for something you no longer do — kill animals — without being a hypocrite.

Top 10 Reasons Not to Eat Chickens

1. ‘Bird Brain’ Is a Compliment
Several recent studies have shown that chickens are bright animals, able to solve complex problems, demonstrate self-control, and worry about the future. Chickens are smarter than cats or dogs and even do some things that have not yet been seen in mammals other than primates. Dr. Chris Evans, who studies animal behavior and communication at Macquarie University in Australia, says, “As a trick at conferences, I sometimes list these attributes, without mentioning chickens, and people think I’m talking about monkeys.” Dr. John Webster of Bristol University found that chickens are capable of understanding cause and effect and that when chickens learn something new, they pass on that knowledge (i.e., they have what scientists call “culture”).How does your IQ compare to that of a chicken?

2. All Drugged Up
Quite simply, chickens are the most abused animals on the planet. Chickens raised for their flesh are packed by the thousands into massive sheds. They are fed large amounts of antibiotics and drugs to keep them alive in conditions that would otherwise kill them. The antibiotics make chickens grow so large, so fast that they often become crippled under their own weight. This reckless use of antibiotics also makes drugs less effective for treating humans by speeding up the development of drug-resistant bacteria. Learn more about the overuse of antibiotics in chickens.

3. Scalded to Death
Only seven weeks after they are born, chickens are crowded onto trucks that transport them to the slaughterhouse. Tens of millions of chickens have their wings and legs broken in the process every year. They are trucked through all weather extremes, sometimes over hundreds of miles, without any food or water. At slaughter, chickens are hung upside-down and have their throats slit, and they are often scalded to death in defeathering tanks. Watch undercover footage of chickens who are mutilated and scalded to death at a Tyson slaughterhouse.

4. They Don’t Even Get a Lawyer
The billions of chickens killed each year are not protected by a single federal law—the “Humane Slaughter Act” exempts birds, even though there are more than 55 times as many chickens slaughtered each year as pigs and cows combined! Chickens raised for their flesh have their sensitive beaks cut off with a hot blade without any painkillers. These intelligent animals spend their entire lives in filthy sheds with tens of thousands of other birds, each getting about as much space as a sheet of paper, where intense crowding and confinement lead to outbreaks of disease. If factory-farm owners treated cats and dogs like they treat chickens, they would go to jail for cruelty to animals. Learn more about the routine abuse of chickens in factory farms.

5. Do You Want Poop With That?
A USDA study found that more than 99 percent of broiler chicken carcasses sold in stores had detectable levels of E. coli, indicating fecal contamination. In other words, if you’re eating chicken flesh, you’re almost certainly eating poop. Consumer Reports states there are “1.1 million or more Americans sickened each year by undercooked, tainted chicken.” Chicken flesh is also loaded with dangerous levels of arsenic, which can cause cancer, dementia, neurological problems, and other ailments in humans. Men’s Health magazine recently ranked supermarket chicken number one in their list of the “10 Dirtiest Foods” because of the high rate of bacterial contamination. Learn more about how eating chicken and meat puts your health at risk.

6. Lose the Fat, Avoid the Flu
Both the Center for Disease Control and the World Health Organization say that if the avian flu virus spreads to the United States, it could be caught simply by eating undercooked chicken flesh or eggs, eating food prepared on the same cutting board as infected meat or eggs, or even touching eggshells contaminated with the disease. Chicken flesh and eggs are packed with cholesterol—a 3-ounce piece of skinless chicken breast meat has as much cholesterol as beef, and just one egg has nearly three times as much! This cholesterol, along with a high intake of animal fats, blocks arteries and causes heart disease.Vegan foods, on the other hand, are all cholesterol-free and much lower in fat!

7. The Most Dangerous Factory Job in America
According to the U.S. Department of Labor’s Bureau of Labor Statistics, slaughterhouse workers are more than three times more likely to suffer injuries while working than workers in other manufacturing jobs, and they suffer a rate of repetitive stress injury that is 35 times higher than that in other manufacturing jobs. The industry refuses to make working conditions safer by slowing line speeds or buying appropriate safety gear, which amounts to what Human Rights Watch calls “systematic human rights violations embedded in meat and poultry industry employment.” Big chicken companies such as Tyson and Perdue also exploit contract factory-farm operators, whom Auburn University economist Robert Taylor calls “serfs with a mortgage.” Contract factory farmers are forced to foot the bill for building and maintaining massive factory farms, which puts them deeply into debt and can drive them to financial ruin if their company cancels future contracts with them. Learn why Human Rights Watch calls meat-packing “the most dangerous factory job in America.”

8. Motherly LoveIn a natural setting, a hen will cluck to her chicks before they even hatch while she sits on the eggs in her nest. They peep back to her and to each other through their shells. In factory farms, eggs are taken from the mother as soon as they are laid and put in large incubators—a chick will never meet his or her parents. Hens prefer to have private nests hidden from predators and will often go without food or water in order to obtain a private nest. This demonstrates the fact that hens will sacrifice their own comfort if it means protecting their chicks. Learn more about the personalities of these interesting animals.

9. Chicken Sh*t
Raising 9 billion chickens in factory farms each year produces enormous amounts of excrement. Oregon State University agriculture professor Peter Cheeke says that factory farming amounts to “a frontal assault on the environment,” which leads to widespread fecal ground and water pollution. Because chickens are fed massive amounts of drugs, hormones, and pesticides, these chemicals are also found in high concentrations in their feces, which means that fecal pollution from chicken farms is especially disastrous for the environment. In West Virginia and Maryland, for example, scientists have recently discovered that male fish are growing ovaries, and they suspect that this freakish deformity is the result of factory-farm runoff from drug-laden chicken feces. Learn more about factory farming’s toll on the Earth.

10. Better Than the Original
Do you like the taste of chicken flesh but don’t like the suffering? No problem—try some of the fantastic alternatives now available, such as Boca Chik’n Nuggets, Gardenburger’s Meatless Buffalo Chicken Wings, and Yves Veggie Chicken Burgers. These super-tasty foods are high in protein, cruelty- and cholesterol- free, and available at your local supermarket. Instead of eggs, try tofu scramble, whip up some vegan French toast, or check out our egg-free baking tips.

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About Frank Marafiote

I have numerous interests (probably too many!) and try to write about them as much as I can. I publish several blogs and web sites and also write copy for other online publishers and businesses.
My writing regularly appears in the Hillary Clinton Quarterly, A Rake's Progress, Garden Reporter, and "Drive A Sailboat."
My great passion has always been flying -- I soloed when I was 16 and eventually became a licensed private pilot. For medical reasons I can't fly real airplanes anymore but I do fly online for a virtual airline called the "Flying Tigers Group." Most of my flights are with VATSIM, which provides real-time air traffic control services. I get to live out my fantasy as a Boeing 737 pilot!
For most of the past 20 years, I was the owner of a marketing consulting firm, Emerge Communications. I recently retired from consulting and closed Emerge to "pursue other opportunities."
To paraphrase the brilliant writer, Grace Paley, most of this is true because I wrote it.

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3 thoughts on “For everyone who is shocked that Sarah Palin is a hunter.”

As an ethical vegan of 30 years, I totally agree with what you say. To take the life of an animal for food, sport or vanity, is a crime against the animal and a crime against humanity. Sarah Palin obvioulsy has a total disconnect when it comes to animal suffering. That worries me greatly. I guess her extreme religious fundalmentalism helps to fuel that insensivity.
I just do not understand how anyone can point a gun at an innocent creature and take its life for no good reason. It sickens me to the depths of my soul.

Hunters do more for wildlife conservation then do a bunch bunny huggers like PETA i mean nature dosnt work like a disney film many animals suffer from acedents,desase,starvation and from weather and at least when hunters pay for their ammo licens and tags the money gose into wildlife conservation and TEDDY ROOSIVELT A ADDVIDE HUNTER CREATED PELICAL ISLAND THE NATIONS FIRST WILDLFE REFUGE

We’re not in the 3rd grade here. We perfectly understand that nature can be harsh. But who are you to play GOD and decide which animals will live and which ones will not? You are not GOD and yet you act as if you are every time you take an innocent life for your own pleasure and your specious argument that you are doing wildlife a favor.

(How many sick and diseased animals have you shot? Probably none. You go after the best and healthiest of the them, weakening the rest in the process.)

As intelligent, spiritual beings who have evolved beyond other animals, we have a moral duty to protect animals, not to kill and abuse them.

Every time a hunter shoots himself or another hunter, hopefully not fatally, I rejoice that one more killer has been removed from the woods and fields.